Brazil Prison Officials Stop Deadly Lottery

SAO PAULO, Brazil — New security measures have stopped a macabre prison protest in which inmates at an overcrowded city jail held a lottery to decide which of their fellow prisoners would be hanged each week, a prison official said Tuesday.

"We put on more guards for a 24-hour watch, and there have been no more hangings," said Police Capt. Antonio Alves, director of the jail in Belo Horizonte, 300 miles north of Sao Paulo.

Alves said in a telephone interview the prisoners chose lots and then hanged the unlucky winner in a protest against prison conditions. He said 12 inmates had been hanged--one a week--during the three-month protest.